At Christmas, All Roads Lead Home
by definitelywalkerbait
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Three familiar ghosts, representing past, present and future pay Daryl an unexpected visit on a cold, bleak Christmas Eve. Will they manage to coax him to reassess his actions and choices and face the reality about the relationship he shares with Carol before it's too late?


**Hey everyone,**

**This is from a prompt I found in tumblr by meggiebrick. I'm not there, but a friend of mine (thanks a lot, Megan) has lured me in and now I'm a stalker (thanks again, Megan). Yes, it's embarrassing, I know. But I stumbled upon that request a few weeks ago and decided to give it a shot. **

**It's set during the time jump between seasons 3 and 4, prior to the events of season 4 but with spoilers about what happens later on for reasons you will find out as you read. Four chapters.**

**Special shout out to Peta2 for her invaluable help and the great honor of being both my friend and my beta.**

**This story is dedicated to Pat83 –I bet you'll crack up when you find out why! **

**Enjoy!**

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With a sharp inward breath, Daryl's eyes snapped open. Drenched in his own sweat, he gasped for air, striving to recall the nightmare that jerked him out of his slumbering state. Nightmares were frequent, almost permanent tenants in his subconscious, bordering on banal and routine, but they were rarely a forgettable, dreary humbug in the backburner of his mind. All he could wrap his mind around was the stony timbre of a sonorous gong, echoing deafeningly like a belfry knelling from hell.

It surely was all this Christmas crap floating around the prison. 'The most beautiful time of the year' when 'everything is possible' and 'family gathers together' and 'dreams come true' because 'love is in the air', doing one hell of a number on him. Bullshit. If he listened to "Last Christmas" one more time, he'd definitely pummel that buzzkill out of whomever it was to press the play button. Groping the makeshift nightstand next to his bunk, he cussed loudly at the dull thump of arrows toppling on the pitted concrete before he grabbed the matches and swiftly lit the lantern.

He froze when the saffron-tinged flame brightened up the pitch blackness of his cell and the presence of his frugal bearings kicked in, staring at her smiling face slack-jawed with a countenance of petrified incredulity. Petite and delicate, pale and regal just like he remembered her, but clean instead of greasy, serene instead of jittery, vivant instead of decaying, a sharp contrast to the last time he kept his gaze peeled on her, a diametrical antithesis with the ossified walker that stepped out of Hershel's barn.

"Sophia?" The raspy, peppered with blatant denial strained tone of his voice rang unfamiliar in his own ears as he shored himself off the mattress, scrubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

Beaming at the sound of her name, Sophia's idle smile blossomed into a cheeky grin. "Glad you remember me," she said, satisfied.

"What kinda fucked up dream is this?" Daryl grouched, his skittish gaze flickering around, too spooked to rest on her for more than a fleeting moment. Everything was off and the apprehension-inundated atmosphere in the cell escalated exponentially with each ticking second. Bare feet hitting the frigid floor, he still wasn't granted enough clarity to blink her presence away.

"Don't worry, you're not losing your mind," she placated, regarding him doe-eyed until his intense stare locked with hers and an audible sough withered out his lips. "I'm a ghost."

Daryl huffed out a shaky chuckle, fighting tooth and nail not to cackle his sarcasm. He was nuts, no doubt, and his knee jerk reaction to cope with whatever madness was cropping up was to start chewing on the strip of crusty skin around his thumbnail. "That's how you're makin' a case that I ain't losin' my mind?" he retorted grumpily, but kept his voice low and Sophia regarded him with stoic patience and radiant-eyed amusement, not squirming, not fidgeting under the extreme scrutiny of his expression as his eyes journeyed over her in a quick, albeit thorough, once over. It was him that squirmed and fidgeted, fingers fiddling in frenzy.

He knew she couldn't be there. No way. Yet, she was. Nothing shadowy and insubstantial about this wraith, no transparency blurring the smooth outlines of her tiny figure, no photo negative smudge, quite the contrary; she was solid, dense, impenetrable to light, fleshy. Real. Ghosts and Daryl weren't strangers. His dreams were littered with them, that was how he deep down knew he was tethered in a well-molded nightmare. Everything was so familiar, still fundamentally different. Sophia was… just Sophia; blonde and freckled and sweet, in her azure, rainbow-printed tee shirt and cropped pair of jeans, her doll lazily nested in her lap. Nothing menacing about her, nothing foreboding. Nothing like the ghosts haunting him day and night, twenty-four seven.

At a loss of words, nothing articulate or vocal enough for what unraveled right there and right now, he risked another sidelong glance. All he could think about was Carol and how he had to storm into her cell and drag her to see the unexpected visitor. All he could do was plant himself on the cot and gawk at Sophia with shock mingled up with memories he wished he contrived a way to permanently shun away, remembering his ludicrous fiasco at locating that little girl in time, how he failed her, how he failed Carol.

However, Sophia was right there in his cell and he wouldn't question the 'how's or 'why's behind the fact. Not as the afterthought of the freezing walls eased in and he realized that he was shivering in his sweat pants and sweater while Sophia sat there in a tee shirt. "Ain't you cold? You can get under the blanket if you want," he floundered urgently, inching to the edge of the mattress. Hopefully he didn't sound like some sort of sick fuck, inviting a little girl in his bed.

"The stool will do just fine, I'm not cold," Sophia offered merrily, her brow quirking in a conspiratorial look that made him wonder how much Carol would look like her at that age. "I'm a ghost, remember?"

"Right, I forgot about that," Daryl snorted and rolled his eyes, lips finally curving into his infamous lopsided smirk. It could be worse. He could have woken up with Shane sneering across from him. In fact, it could only be worse. Of all the nonsensical apparitions and the mind-fucking games his brain had in store for him, Sophia was the most welcome and harmless. By far.

Hopping on her feet, she ambled closer, dauntless and confident, her finger playfully jabbing Daryl's forearm when she plopped down next to him. "You're funny. I only remember you being scary."

There she was, all bright, glittering eyes. "Sorry about that, kid," he mumbled and minced off part of his cuticle, nodding in agreement to the rightful indictment.

"I know you wouldn't hurt me. You just like to pretend you're mean, but I don't buy it," she teased and this time her curled punch banged lightly on his bicep.

He knew that sassy smile, those twinkling eyes, that frolicsome tone, those same jokes. Everything about Sophia was identical to the person he was most fond of in the world, a carbon reflection of her mother. "You're a lot like your mom, I reckon."

"You like my mom," Sophia winked and his face went instantly ablaze, cheeks scorching as if scalding water was splashed on his face.

Kids, that's why he didn't like them. They were nosy and snoopy and wouldn't stop until they got their way with all that blabbering, as if they possessed the Holy Grail of knowledge. Worst part was, he wouldn't really bet his life that they didn't. "Everyone likes your mom," he muttered, focused on gnawing on his already half-hacked thumbnail with remarkable scholasticism.

"That's not what I mean," she giggled, shooting him a mischievous look."You love her, like my dad was supposed to love her."

His fumbling slur knotted up into a tongue-tied stuttering and he pouted at his knees, teeth digging deeper on raw flesh. Part of him wanted to rant, rave, quail and bolt and not even necessarily in that order, but the other part of him, the victorious one, dictated that he never let her out of sight again, that he wanted her just there, that he felt protective about her, that, of all the kids he had stumbled upon in his life, Sophia was the one hurling a weird, unfathomable current of paternal instinct in his gut. Maybe it was because she was Carol's. Maybe vice versa. Maybe he was just a pussy. "It ain't like that, kid. We're- we're friends."

"Sure. It's not like I expected you to flat out admit it anyway." Sophia shrugged, tugging the mangled digit out of his mouth. "Stop that, you'll draw blood," she chastised, brows rutted in a reprimand that did little to harden the kind-hearted nobility of someone limning innocence.

Just like Carol. Same castigation. Same diction choice. Same voice resonance. Same melody. Same eyes. Same crawlway straight to his heart. Daryl's head lolled despite his better judgment, regarding her tentatively, too conscious of the entire crimson-hued spectrum slithering across his features. Oddly enough, plastering the untouchable guy persona of straight-faced detachment had tumbled downhill his priority list. "Why are you here?" he whispered.

Pressing her lips as if prowling for the suitable words, Sophia inhaled deeply. "Have you ever watched the movie 'The Christmas Carol'?"

"The one with Scrooge and the three ghosts?" Receiving an assertive nod, Daryl cussed under his breath. "I knew nothin' good would come outta this Christmas bullshit."

"I'm your first ghost for tonight. Just a onetime thing, I promise," she crooned with an empathetic, meaningful stare. "After that, I'll never bother you again. We're gonna get a glimpse of your past, you and I."

"You dunno jack about my past, Sophia," he murmured.

"You're one big, whiny baby, you know that?" Sophia rolled her eyes, lips puckering playfully. "Why would I be here in the first place if I didn't have any wisdom to provide?"

"Beats me," Daryl grunted, mustering a scowl albeit the corners of his lips twitched in reluctant amusement. Nothing short of dangerous and luring, mystical vexes, without even deliberately summoning their seductiveness –they were the Peletier women summed up. Like mother, like daughter. "Why you?"

"Strict, no-scaring-the-host policy. I came first because I'm the cute one," Sophia grinned smugly and nudged his shoulder.

Daryl chuckled at the jabbing quirk of her brow. "And a smartass, huh?"

"Just like my mom!" she laughed out with considerable fanfare and stood up, spreading out her fingers and letting her hand soar in the space between them, anticipating his reaction. "Walk with me?"

Narrowing his eyes quizzically, Daryl bit his lower lip, weighing the alternatives at hand before sighing in resignation. He didn't want this, he wasn't even sure if Sophia fit the age standard to view the scenes embedded in his past. But he couldn't resist her, no more than he could resist Carol and every crazy idea that popped in her mind. A calloused paw curled around her hand and he rose, the contradiction of their tangled limbs dazzling him. Coarse against soft, tanned against pale, sturdy against delicate; a match founded on extreme opposites. He'd follow her wherever she wished to wander overnight, if only to make sure she stayed safe and trod carefully. "Where to?" he inquired as they came to a standstill inches away from the wall.

She craned her neck and locked eyes with him, every speck of light-hearted mood replenished with caring attentiveness. There was a shared togetherness there, as if somehow, beyond reason and common sense, two people originating from the poles of black and white spectrum had effortlessly met halfway, in the coziness and safety of a grey-hued film. A togetherness that felt anything but forced and awkward.

The answer neither startled nor scared him, surprisingly so.

"Memories."

Sophia glided her palm down the cinderblock wall, no more than a feather touch, and their dappled-grey whereabouts ebbed away, relinquishing the scenery for a newly formed landscape to creep in. On instinct, his grip around the girl's frail hand tightened protectively as the whirlwind of images morphed into a disfigured film and she responded to the blistering agitation of his gaze with an appeasing squeeze.

There they stood, outside the prison fences and every muscle of his body tensed like a tightrope, nerves taut and ears perking up as he scanned their bearings for looming threats, clutching Sophia's fingers with such a physical stamina that threatened to pulverize her bones into embers. No walkers around, though, no nothing. "Don't worry, I got you," she stated solemnly, oblivious of the irony, and tugged him towards the adjacent hill. "Chop chop, we don't have all night!"

Step by step, they were ascending the steep soil, step by step he took wind of him burrowing barefoot in the snow-cloaked ground, the absence of cold despite it, Sophia's warmth. It was a dream, but it was a dream worth dreaming.

"Slippery," she muttered peevishly when her sneakers skidded on a patch of ice and she groaned her distress.

Without a word, Daryl swept her off her feet and cradled her in his embrace, sequestering the reasons behind this movement at the backburner of his mind. All those pungent, relentless and pertinacious 'why's mincing his sanity. Why his arms jiggled to engulf her into an embrace, why he had to wrestle the urge not to squeeze her breathless against him, why this fragile china doll was such a precious cargo, a cargo he wanted to cling to forever, a cargo he wanted to share with Carol, a cargo he wished was as much his own as Carol's. It had never happened, but it felt like a déjà vu, carrying Sophia safely in the wilderness. Almost two years ago, he had searched and searched and searched for this little girl, wishing for this exact moment to miraculously come true. He didn't care, though. Even in a dream, even with great delay, he was bestowed this moment. Carol would be happy with the sight they provided and he didn't feel the urge to spontaneously combust and flee the embarrassment.

Sophia wrapped her arms around his neck, perching there comfortably. "Better now, thank you."

Smiling bashfully at her, Daryl waded the last feet to the top and then the images gushed in, waltzing around and past the two laced figures, never blissful or even remotely pleasant, just haunting. The spin would pause momentarily every now and then, ruffled fragments of days gone by unraveling before his eyes. He watched while tart bile bubbled up his throat, he watched his life flashing out as if it belonged to a complete stranger, some random guy he couldn't relate to.

_Bleary balls, fractured ornaments, frayed streamers, an angled star sloppily set on the top of a fir withering fast._

_His mother buried in pots and pans, cooking a humble Christmas meal in her flowery robe as sob-less tears rolled down her face and a Virginia slim was casually smothering into embers, slanted over the brim of the ash tray. _

_Merle, loud and brazen as usual, posing on the shabby armchair, firing his fake gun in the air because he was John Wayne those days. _

_Daryl, no older than four, hands and nose pasted on the window, wondering how come the other kids were stupid enough to believe in Santa and expect presents. He did neither. He was just hungry._

_And then the door was kicked open, nearly bust off its hinges, and his father staggered in, a bootlegger smashed in his own hooch._

"Not a happy childhood, huh?" Sophia's soft voice shattered his jumbled reverie and a light tilt beneath his chin coaxed him back to reality.

"No," he rasped quickly, swaying his head to get in tight reins the emotion rippling his sternum.

_An armchair had already toppled over under a cascade of braying profanities. Merle positioned himself in a passive aggressive stance and their mother ran out of the kitchen, pleading her husband to stop, while Daryl was clawing his way beneath the table._

"Don't look, Sophia," he said almost pleadingly, but Sophia didn't heed, propping the side of her face against his head.

"Cruel man."

In reflex, Daryl snuggled her closer. "Drunk… Junkie…" he muttered, face brooding and pensive as the images bleeped all over the place. "He'd get hammered and come home for some kind of macho showdown. But it was an everyday thing, not a Christmas special."

"And all you could do was watch," Sophia hummed gloomily. "First your mom…"

_She was already snared under a handful of tousled curls as his father schlepped her around the wooden slats, plowing his bent knee deep into her stomach before Merle lunged at him, delivering a square clout on his jaw._

"Then Merle…" she droned on.

Then Merle. As bold and savage his brother grew to be, nearly a copycat of their father, Merle was and always had been the only advocate Daryl and their mother had against him, the last stronghold between them and the balled fists swinging for their weak bodies. Becoming untarnished to the point of barbarism later made sense under the prism of his life experience. After all, there was nobody to protect him and his short-lived resistance against their tyrant.

_Two swift swings and Merle was knocked out cold, cracking his head in the corner of the table and soon after a terrified Daryl was dragged out from the ankles, squirming, flapping and wailing in the process._

"Until my number was up… A god damn ritual," he sputtered, watching himself being beaten to a pulp, almost gnawing the plastic flavor of chipped paint when his mouth crushed on the staircase banister. "I stopped hidin' after a while."

_A fast forward and he was older now, maybe in his pre-teens. Same old story, same old berserk spree, fisticuffs and all, only Merle wasn't around this time._

"Where was Merle?" Sophia asked and a gentle palm cupped his cheek.

Stiffening, Daryl lifted his shoulders, lips pursed in a thin line. "On a binge? Juvie? Who knows? In the army later."

"I'm sorry."

"Reckon you had the same bucket load of shit in your life." He squinted at her, but Sophia shook her head.

"He never touched me," she said soberly. "My mom wouldn't let him, but I watched her take up all the beatings for me."

"That sounds like your mom," Daryl soughed under the suffocating encumbrance of an anvil trampling his chest.

"Back when everything was normal I once gave her a good scare, you know." Sophia forced a smile and he willed his unremitting attention back to her and away from the blood-curdling images surrounding them. "She walked in on me in my room one day and found me staring at my toys. When she asked me why I wasn't playing with them, I told her I was playing them in my head. She dragged me over to a child psychologist for six months in a row."

She chuckled and Daryl echoed her. "That sounds even more like your mom. Worryin' her brain ragged."

"Thing is, she was right. The psychologist said that, apparently, the living conditions in our place weren't favorable for me to open up and express myself, so I retracted to not touch anything or make a mess and just play stuff in my mind. Well, that was the idea anyway."

"I wonder why with all that crap around," he scoffed.

"You're a lot like me, you know," she stated tenderly albeit matter-of-factly and the melancholic twinkle brimming in her pupils ignited a churn deep in Daryl's gut. There was a point to be made there, a message to be conveyed. "You do the same thing, but you do it with people, my mom mostly."

_An onslaught of freshly woven images spiraled around then. He was in the spotlight again, wincing at the way Carol buried the pickaxe he handed her in Ed's skull and then turning the opposite direction; trudging away from her sob-riddled figure in Dale's trailer with the sole purpose of fleeing from her gut-wrenching pain when Sophia's fate was revealed; watching her denial to participate in the debate for Randall's fate from the outskirts of the Green's living room; stalking her stone set countenance during Dale's funeral._

"Thought this was about Christmas," Daryl bristled, swallowing hard.

"It's about your life," Sophia corrected. "You observe and stare, watch her act and make choices, but you don't interfere to change anything. With the exception of death that is. When she's in danger you always rush in to save her. But other than that, you just watch."

The Carol topic was way off limits for him, precariously trespassing the line of an already wobbling composure. "Watchin' people and playin' toys in your head ain't the same, you lil' nutcase," he tried to dodge the remarks.

"Fair enough," Sophia complied. "Let me break it down for you then. Here."

_Michonne refused the 'cold trail' declaration, insisting, demanding that they keep searching for the Governor, keep forcing one foot in front of the other, keep pushing and ignoring their bad luck while he thought it was pointless and the woman facing him was dangerously obsessed, but gave her a curt nod anyway._

"You didn't even make it clear to Michonne that this tracing the Governor mission has reached a dead end. It's nothing more than a witch hunt now, but you… Why wouldn't you do that?"

Gritting his teeth, Daryl had nothing convincing enough to offer in response.

"And here…"

_They were back at Dale's funeral, and he was standing a step behind and sideways Carol, prying the imperceptible furrow of her brows while she stared at a vacant, faraway point, light years away from all the people circling the freshly-dug grave, in vain narrowing his eyes to read between those scribbled lines of her in a mind control spell to spare him a glance._

"You wanted her to turn around and see you, you played it in your head. But when she did, you just…"

_Swirled on his heels and bolted. _

"See?"

That he was done talking Daryl knew it for a while now. He wasn't done hearing, though, surprisingly so. Jaw clenching painfully, he viewed the collage of snapshots like a casual spectator and not the protagonist of his own play, somebody else's slideshow. He had trouble breathing, but stubbornly refused to choke up. Sophia was right, prodding him into a unsolicited self-awareness he could neither hack nor wrestle off.

He hated that he was coerced to avert his gaze under the intensity of her punctuating look. This conversation had backfired. Instead of fathoming the Sophia riddle, he stood naked and exposed before her, unraveled pathetically like a broken maze, idly wondering why the fuck his defense mechanisms had lagged and he was still lingering there, listening to a kid reverently and mutely instead of high-tailing it like a bat out of hell. It was hurtful and crude the truth that she exhibited, a pain running just too deep. But it was also the lack of spleen and offense behind it that pinned him on the spot.

"Truth is you are a doer, but have barely ever acted in advance to write your own story," Sophia concluded gently.

"Thought you were twelve," he grumbled and frowned at her.

"It doesn't work like that, silly," she smirked. "I'm your conscience, so age isn't really an issue here. You were right about one thing, though, got to give you that. People and toys aren't the same. People hurt and don't always behave like you want them to. But you already know that." As her voice trailed off, her gaze was sorrowful again. "Or don't you?"

Daryl's eyes flicked back to a new image.

_Carol, frantically counting the survivors behind the rolled up windows of the Fiat. A gasp, a desperate look and a hand mauling up to her stomach. 'Where's Daryl?' Rick hurried to her, clasping her shoulder. 'It's all right. He's alive.' A hesitation, a pointless quest for words that wouldn't hurt. 'We ran into his brother. They went off.' Then disbelief, denial and a grimace of pain fused with doubt. 'He left? Daryl left? He's gone? Is he coming back?'_

Wheezing an inward breath, Daryl averted his gaze and heaved to lever the overflowing emotion in check, blaming the blurry image for his stinging eyes. He hadn't known. He had never dared to ask how Carol reacted to his leaving with Merle. The tears, the pain, the disappointment; he suspected they all were there, but didn't want to know anything about it. Somehow, despite the unanswered question marks, it was always easier that way.

"I wasn't asking you if you love my mom earlier, I was telling you," Sophia worded carefully and with forethought, piercing through his haze. "You are in love with her, too."

His hammering heart was now drumming in his ears. Love. Being in love. How was he supposed to know these feelings, let alone the alterations between them? He had no past experience or even a remote parallel he could relate with to identify them. He knew pain and loneliness and that pretty much summed up all his emotional stock. Maybe he had also acquainted friendship somewhere along the way, being friends with most members of his group, calling them family. But love? Or being in love? He'd parrot that Rick and Hershel loved their children or that Maggie and Glenn were in love, but for Daryl these emotions were bizarre, simply because he couldn't read between the lines.

"None of these are random, you have to understand that," Sophia went on, undeterred by his unresponsiveness. "That's what you've been doing so far, because that's what your upbringing taught you to do. Watch, not intersect. Look on your life like a bystander, passive and uninvolved, play things in your head."

"But that was just your past," Sophia whispered soothingly in his ear. "Doesn't bind you for the present, much less for the future."

He only blinked for a split second, but when his eyes shot open again, the warped mirrors and the misty rainbows had obliterated and they were both back in the cold clinch of his cell.

"Put me down now," Sophia asked, but his arms clamped around her, an inescapable vice. "It's ok, Daryl, you have to let me go."

His features tensed, twitching as if he was preparing for war, and a jarring emotion of crippling urge to hold on to her until Carol woke up to find them rampaged his chest. He wanted this triumph, needed to give her the self-fulfilment of a reunion with her daughter. He knew he couldn't. Not anymore. Past couldn't be annihilated not even for partially righting the wrongs, second chances were inexistent, history couldn't be rewritten, there were no crossroads for a deal with the devil. Sophia was just a ghost, a figment of his imagination.

"I can't stay, I don't belong here," she explained sweetly.

Exhaling raggedly, he lowered her carefully as if she was the finest of porcelains until the soles of her sneakers grazed the ground and he crouched down in front of her.

Sophia responded by caressing his cheek. "Think what we talked about, will you?"

Daryl nodded, leaning into her touch.

"And smile more often. It looks good on you. I bet my mom likes it."

Just like Carol. Same advice, same expression.

"And keep an eye on her, please?"

"Always do," he asserted huskily, coughing to rid the lump bloating in his throat, painfully impeding his breath. Sophia took a step back and he motioned at the doll in her embrace to detonate their loaded interaction, his mind drifting back to the day he retrieved it, muddy and soggy and barely recognizable from a lake shore, during his personal crusade to find her in one piece. It was less than two years ago, yet it felt like an altogether different lifetime. "Last time I saw it, it was one filthy piece of shit."

"Not anymore," Sophia grinned and wagged the doll in the air with another retreating stride, continuously adding more space between herself and Daryl, almost out of arm's reach. "See? Squeaky clean!" A bell echoed from the distance and Sophia broke eye contact, gaze flickering around, searching for something.

Daryl squatted closer and grabbed her shoulders. "I looked for you, Sophia. Tried my damnedest!" He was babbling, words wriggling out curt, fast, slashed, contorted into a moan. The moment he had finally got a hold on her, the very same moment he had to witness her vanish in shards of smokes again. For the first time in his life he had a lot to say and no time to. "Thought I'd find you and bring you back to your mom safe and sound till the very end."

"I know," she replied in all seriousness and broke free, instantly offering a tight-lipped smile, Carol's smile. "You're a good man and what happened here tonight… Consider it me returning the favor, even if you can't put your finger on what it means yet. You'll find out soon enough, I promise."

She was leaving. And he was nowhere near ready to let that happen again. "You ok out there?"

"Yes. Don't worry about me," Sophia nodded intensely. "Andrea, T-Dog and the others say hi, by the way."

"You stick with them and stay safe, you hear? And if you stumble upon Merle, don't go scurryin' away. He's an asshole most of the time, but can take good care of you and-"

Laughing out a gargling laughter, Sophia shot him a puzzled looked and peered over his shoulder, obviously happy with what she saw there. "What are you talking about? Merle is my favorite."

"Told you my brother's a pain in the ass."

The low drawl from behind him shocked Daryl who hauled up on his feet, eyes drifting bewildered between his two visitors.

"Be nice to Daryl, Pookie, unless you want to put yourself in trouble," Sophia warned, before casting a gleeful wink to Daryl and glancing back at Merle. "See you soon," she waved and then her spot was empty in a heartbeat.

"I'll be right behind you, kiddo."

* * *

**Thank you all for reading. If you liked it, drop me an encouraging word. If you didn't, constructive criticism is always welcome. For some shameless self-promotion, I have also posted a new story under the title 'Cold' in case you want to check it out :)**


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